Belarus becomes world’s top country for SPAM

Belarus has eclipsed the US to become the biggest single source of global spam, according to cloud-based email and web security firm AppRiver.

Junk volumes from the landlocked former Soviet republic, which borders Poland and Russia, hit an all-time high on 13 April and have sustained this level since then.

In January, AppRiver security researchers were seeing an average of 3.1 million spam messages per day from Belarus. After the spike happened on 13 April, AppRiver said it began recording an average of 12.3 million spam messages per day – which is now climbing.

Only one in a thousand messages from Belarus is legitimate, with 99.9 per cent of the electronic messages consisting of junk mail, said the security firm. Current volumes of junkmail from Belarus are exceeding those from the US, the historic source of most of the world’s internet detritus.